Red Sox Reportedly Acquire Wade Miley
Well, this has been an interesting afternoon of Wade Miley rumors. First, the D’Backs were reportedly close to a deal with Boston, then Boston wasn’t involved at all, then it was the Marlins who were close to a deal, then no one was close, and now apparently the Red Sox have struck a deal to land Miley after all.
#RedSox have agreement in principle for #DBacks’ Miley, sources tell me and @jonmorosi. AZ will get Webster, De La Rosa and a minor leaguer.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 11, 2014
The quick facts, and then we’ll have a full post up when all the details are known.
Wade Miley is 28, under team control for three more seasons, and is projected to make $4.3 million in arbitration this winter. His ERA went the wrong way last season, but since you’re on FanGraphs, I’m going to assume you know not to evaulate a pitcher by single season ERA. In over 600 big league innings, he has an ERA-/FIP-/xFIP- line of 97/97/98, which is solidly above average for a starter. Especially a durable starter with no health issues.
Rubby de la Rosa is probably the main piece coming back to Arizona. He’ll be 26 in a few months and is under team control for four more seasons, and he’ll make the league minimum this year. His stuff is good, but he doesn’t miss as many bats as you’d expect for a guy with his velocity and the command isn’t great. He’s also a Tommy John recovery guy, and the combination of some medical red flags and bad command have some projecting him as a reliever.
Allen Webster (turns 26 in February) is a simliar good stuff/bad command guy who doesn’t get enough strikeouts to justify the walks. His velocity also tumbled last year, as his fastball fell from 94.0 in 2013 to 92.0 in 2014. He comes with two extra years of team control, but he also seems likely to end up as a reliever. Probably more so than de la Rosa, in fact.
The third prospect is unknown as of this moment.
2015 Steamer projections
Wade Miley: 192 IP, +2.3 WAR
Rubby de la Rosa: 189 IP, +1.4 WAR
Allen Webster: 182 IP, +0.6 WAR
The Red Sox trade 10 years of team control for three years, but get a much more reliable mid-rotation starter in exchange. And if de la Rosa and Webster end up as relievers, then the extra years won’t matter much at all. While I recognize that I probably like pitchers in the mold of Wade Miley more than most, my early take — without knowing who the third prospect is, which could change things — is that this is a pretty nifty upgrade for the Red Sox.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
So we got a left handed Joe Kelly? It’s and upgrade, but not too much.
Miley is a notch better than Kelly. Which makes them #1 and #2 in the rotation, unless Buchholz turns it around.
And, probably better to start filling in those rotation holes while you can. Unless you don’t mind forking over Boras’s ransom demands of 8 years and $250 million for Scherzer.
Or, $155M/6 for Lester…
Miley has three straight seasons of roughly 200 innings. Kelly has never come close to that. Miley’s K/BB numbers are also a lot nicer than Kelly’s.
Um, Ben, I thought you were going to use that glut of position players to get a starter or two, not a couple of young arms.
Well, at least it’s Wade Miley, who’s a solid pickup. The Braves probably would have gone for Alfredo Simon instead.
I don’t like it and I’m not sure why Dave likes it. You essentially got a .3 WAR upgrade, but I believe De La Rosa and Webster have higher upside. Wade Miley is Wade Miley. De La Rosa who sits in the upper 90’s an hits 100 with an elite changeup. Allen Webster struggles with command, but has #2 stuff with a nice Sinker,Slider, and Changeup.
At worse they were both very solid late inning relievers and possibly closers….they are also under control for more years.
Agreed. This is the kind of trade you make when you have one rotation slot left to fill (and 3 or 4 better pitchers to put him behind). Miley’s an average innings-eater, basically a #4 starter in a decent rotation. Right now, Wade Miley might be Boston’s ace. That’s awful.
Pretty sure the Red Sox will acquire an ace, and I would rate Joe Kelly over Miley, despite his poor 2014, and Buchholz if he can bounce back, Barnes and Owens are the future aces though, so they hope
Neither are future aces. I’d go as far as to say: As in a “true ace” Webster has a better shot of being a true ace than Owens/Barnes because at least be has ace stuff.
An “ace” is an intangible abstraction that isn’t a good way to build a rotation. It’s more about quality contribution, top-to-bottom, than the magical “ace” who sits atop the depth chart and has a sparkling ERA. That’s half the reason guys like Scherzer and Lester are getting massive paydays – and I think the Sox should stay the hell away from that thinking.
“An “ace” is an intangible abstraction that isn’t a good way to build a rotation”
Unless you want to, you know, win playoff games where:
1. You may have a 1-game play in
2. You will certainly have a best of 5 series where your best pitcher will pitch up to twice, and your 4+5 pitchers will ride much pine.
3. You will have a couple best-of-seven series where your best pitcher could pitch up to THREE of those games.
The postseason lends itself to teams with a great top of the rotation (e.g., 1-2), in part due to the layoff times that let you reload to the top of your rotation. Despite this, I will stab myself in the eye with a fork if the Red Sox pay a crazy sum of money for Shield’s decline years.
Of course, the statistical definition of an ace is less cut-and-dry but you could probably say at least 1 SD above average might be reasonable. Given that the league average for innings by starters was 3.82 last year and the standard deviation is at least 0.5, we can be pretty sure the Red Sox have no ace. Also, looking at the pitching market, I don’t see one on the horizon either.
I don’t hate the trade. I just buy into RDLR and Webster more than most. They traded upside for security. It wouldn’t surprise me in RDLR is as good as Miley next year. I think this trade is simply a matt of preference. I prefer upside to security. Than again: I am not going to be spending $200M of my money.
So it’s would be fine if he had different teammates currently, but due to it being December it’s bad? I’d be shocked if the Red Sox didn’t add at least two starting pitchers. Let the offseason play out, I doubt they anticipate Miley being anything more than the 4th or 5th. At some point they needed to add a reliable arm to the rotation.
I basically agree with you, but it’s more than a .3 WAR upgrade. de la Rosa and Webster were slotted for 371 innings combined while Miley is scheduled for 192. It’s closer to a 1.2 upgrade per the projections.
Thanks for doing these updates at night so that we hot stove addicts can get our fix in nearly real-time. I appreciate that Rosenthal, the GM’s, anand the guys at MLBTR aren’t the only ones working overtime during the winter meetings.
Non elite SP’ers never seem to transition well to the AL East, especially those coming over from the NL
the AL East now sucks. This was true 5 years ago, and for good reason, but this is not the AL East of 5 years ago.
Dempster was probably a little worse than the Sox expected him to be in 2013, Buehrle on the other hand has handled the transition decently. How many other recent examples are there? McCarthy wasn’t exactly an innings eater, but he would qualify as a “non elite SP”, Hiroki Kuroda?
This is kind of a meaningless statement. What’s the cutoff for “elite?” It seems sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that they’re “elite” if they succeed and scrubs if they don’t. Do you have any examples of what you’re talking about?
Can anyone explain why Miley’s WAR numbers are so mediocre? The last two seasons he has averaged over 200 innings, yet averaged only 1.1 bWAR and 1.8 fWAR. Considering almost every other number I have seen looks solid or better and he pitches in a hitters park, why is his WAR numbers so crappy?
1)FIP doesn’t love him.
2)Being a pitcher with a 4.00 FIP is the NL isn’t that special. Mike Leake is a another fine example of this being true.
Pitchers with stats similar to Miley 2012-14:
(Niese, Quintana, Gallardo, Buchholz, Lester)
html fail in that last comment…
http://tinyurl.com/MileyComps
red sox fans should be happy.
they turned two of their many overhyped mid-20s mediocre aaa non-prospects into an actual legit average inning eating mlb sp.
smart move by ben to take advantage of the overhype.
then again, given that miley is good and the other two are probably fungible middle relievers, don’t be surprised if the mystery third prospect is a tasty morsel.